Trending News: Stressed? You, My Friend, Need A Bromance

Why Is This Important?

Long Story Short

Bromances can help keep you calm by producing the stress-busting hormone oxytocin — and perhaps give you the urge to have a quick cuddle, too. Hug it out, big guy.

Long Story

Embrace the bromance, because new research shows that men who have friendships with other men have higher levels of the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin, which helps you cope with stress.

Scientists at the University of California tested the benefits of the male friendships on rats, and found that it helped them cope with mild stress. You know, like having their cheese taken away or stumbling across a mousetrap.

They put pairs of rats in cages together, before moving them into a confined space on their own for three hours. When the rats were reunited, they were friendlier with each other than they were before, and they touched and huddled together more — quite a surprise since male rats can often be aggressive when housed together.

The researchers measured oxytocin levels in the rats’ brains, and found that levels were higher in the rats who had buddies.

The researchers didn’t test whether the same was true of male-female relationships, because the experiment would have invariably ended in sex, said Elizabeth Kirby, author of the paper. Presumably she was still talking about the rats.

But she said the study showed that male friendships can help to combat stress.

“A bromance can be a good thing. Males are getting a bad rap when you look at animal models of social interactions, because they are assumed to be instinctively aggressive. But even rats can have a good cuddle — essentially a male-male bromance — to help recover from a bad day.”

“Having friends is not un-masculine,” she added. “These rats are using their rat friendships to recover from what would otherwise be a negative experience. If rats can do it, men can do it too,” she said.

But, she says, a bromance doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful to be healthy.

“Any sort of social bonding increases oxytocin levels — it doesn’t have to be a deep discussion,” she says.

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Who says the male-female scenario wouldn’t have been good for stress levels, too?

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So now we know rats don’t like to be alone — that means where there’s one…